ed a bit,
but that did not last long, and presently he became unconscious. I
believed he was dead.

The choice then seemed to lie between drowning too or letting go of him.
I did not dare try the shallows, for ninety per cent. of them are
quicksands in that river, and more than one army has perished in the
effort to force its way across. The only possible safety lay in keeping
to mid-stream and sweeping along with the current until something should
turn up--a boat--a log--possibly a backwater, or even the breakwater of
a bridge.

So I decided to drown, and to annoy the angels of the underworld by
taking as long as possible in the process. And I set to work to fight as
I had never in my whole life fought before. It was like swimming in a
millrace. The current swirled us this and that way, but everlastingly
forward.

Sometimes the current rolled us over and over on each other, but for
fifty per cent. of the time I managed to keep King on top of me, I
swimming on my back and holding him by both arms, head nearly out of the
water. I can't explain exactly why I went to all that trouble, for I was
convinced he was dead.

I remember wondering what the next world was going to be like, and
whether King and I would meet there, or whether we would each be sent to
a sphere suited to our individual requirements--and if so, what my
sphere would be like, and whether either of us would ever meet Yasmini,
and what she would be doing there. But it never occurred to me once that
Athelstan King might be alive yet, or that he and I would be presently
treading mother earth again.

I remember several terrific minutes when a big tree came whirling toward
us in an eddy, and my legs got tangled up in some part of it that was
under water. Then, when I managed to struggle free, King's cotton
loin-cloth became wrapped in a tangle of twigs and I could neither
wrench nor break him free; whenever I tried it I merely sent myself
under and pulled his head after me.

However, that tree suggested the possibility of prolonging the agony a
while.

I seized a branch and tried to take advantage of it, using all my
strength and skill to keep the tree from rolling over on King and
submerging him completely. I can remember when we whirled under the
steel bridge and the tree struck the breakwater of the middle pier; that
checked us for a moment, and instead of sending us under, dragged King
half out of the water, so that he lay after that on top of a br